He dares Trump to veto a Medicare expansion bill
Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed said the Democratic Party needs new leadership in the Senate and warned that returning to old habits could cost Democrats the mandate voters just handed them, in an interview with NPR’s Leila Fadel published Nov. 12 as part of the network’s Newsmakers series.
El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former public health official whom Michigan voters elected to the Senate in the midterms, will become the first Muslim to join the chamber when he takes office in January, according to NPR’s introduction to the interview. NPR noted the victory “did not come easy”: the network’s introduction said Republicans directed bigoted vitriol at him, and that members of his own party thought he leaned too far left.
El-Sayed said he appreciates Senator Schumer and credited the senator with supporting his campaign. “I deeply appreciate Senator Schumer. He and I built a partnership over the course of, you know, my campaign. He was very, very supportive of that campaign. I’m grateful for that. But this is about leadership for the American public. And if all we do is kind of go back to what we’ve been doing in a moment where we’ve been given a mandate, I worry that we may not earn our mandate,” he said.
Asked by Fadel whether he sees Schumer as “a leader of the past, not the future,” El-Sayed replied, “I think the American public has been very clear about that, and I think we need to move forward into a future where we’re taking the reins and fighting to win.”
Fadel asked whether he had concerns the party’s moment could be squandered. “Absolutely,” El-Sayed said. “People are fed up with politics generally, and they have very temporarily put their trust in us. What we do next dictates whether or not they want to continue to trust us.” He said “there is no point to these jobs, aside from doing the things that the public needs you to do,” and that people are struggling “under the weight of an affordability crisis that is crushing them at every single turn.” He said Democrats should put “the political strategy secondary” and focus on “the things we need to do to solve those problems that sit in the lives of everyday people,” adding, “the politics will solve themselves.”
Fadel noted that El-Sayed is heading into a divided government and asked whether he could make things more affordable in the months ahead. “Yes,” he said. Asked how, he answered: “End the war. Stop the tariffs.”
On healthcare, El-Sayed said the party should “make sure Medicaid tax cuts don’t take hold, bring back the ACA subsidies and then start toward the path of Medicare for All.” He argued that a public consensus favoring guaranteed healthcare differs from the political consensus “meaning both parties” because of “somebody’s money. It is pharma money. It is insurance money,” and said, “I stood up against that money.”
El-Sayed proposed a bill that he said would “eliminate all the gaps in Medicare” and extend the program “to children and people under 55,” predicting “that thing would have 95% support in the public.” When Fadel noted that such a bill would need support in Congress, he replied: “And then I dare Donald Trump to veto. I dare him. Because if you want to make the argument that Democrats want to deliver for you, do that. Make him veto it. Make him. I bet you he’ll put his name on it. He’ll probably pass it.”
Fadel told El-Sayed he faced “a really ugly campaign” that “really leaned on bigoted tropes about your ethnicity, your religion, and that started at the top.” She said the president of the United States had called him “a Jihadist lunatic,” and that Senator Ted Cruz called him a “Jihadist leprechaun.” El-Sayed said the attacks were not new to him: “this is not the first time I heard any of that. I don’t really care what you’ve said about me in the past. I care that people in Michigan have healthcare, that they can afford their gas and groceries and that we’re building an America that is befitting of the American dream.” Asked whether he would sit down with Cruz, he said: “If he wants to help us get money out of politics, put money in pockets to pass Medicare for All, sure.”
El-Sayed confirmed two recent statements about Trump that Fadel cited — calling him “the dumbest effing guy who ever was president” and saying Democrats should “drop the decorum and treat the president as the unserious fool that he is” — answering “True” to each. Asked why, he said Trump is “a bully, alongside being a narcissist,” and that “the only way you deal with bullies is to stand up to them.” He added: “the way you take on a bully is to bully back because then they learn that this does not make them feel strong.”
Asked whether the approach could push Trump away, El-Sayed said no, “because he cannot stand being disliked.” He said the president’s “biggest incentive now” is that “he wants me to like him,” predicting the message would “probably” reach Trump’s desk, and offered a direct overture: “Call my office. We can have a meeting.”
Fadel also asked about a moment from El-Sayed’s victory speech in which he referred to Vice President JD Vance as “JD Habibi,” a phrase she said has become “a touchstone” inspiring hats and T-shirts and prompting explainers, including by The Associated Press, noting the Arabic word means “beloved” but “can mean bro or pal.” El-Sayed said he wrote that speech but “Habibi wasn’t in the speech.” He described Vance as a politician “who represents the worst of the instincts of our politics because he is so focused on his own ascension,” and framed the remark as a message to the vice president: “you have mercilessly attacked me for this thing about me that I’m actually really quite proud of. You know, I love my heritage, and it makes me no less American than you.” He said the moment carried both empathy, “because somewhere along the line, somebody should’ve loved you harder,” and a lasting tag.
Asked what it will be like to be sworn in by Vance, El-Sayed said: “I hope he doesn’t make it awkward. I won’t.” On the oath itself, he said he will likely swear in on a Quran and has not chosen which, noting Thomas Jefferson had a copy of a Quran and that the University of Michigan holds “the first Quran in the state of Michigan,” which “might be the choice.” “Whatever my name is, however I pray, it’s not the book that you swear on. It’s the book you swear allegiance to,” he said.
El-Sayed said he spent time the day before the interview at the National Archives with the original copy of the Constitution. “This document is the reason that no matter how I pray, that I could run for office and that the folks in my state could elect me,” he said, adding, “Not every country has that, and, like, we should not take it for granted.”
NPR said the full Newsmakers interview also covers possible Democrat-led investigations of the Trump administration and why El-Sayed has never shied away from embracing his name, religion and ethnicity. Fadel closed the segment by identifying the senator-elect by his full name: Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.